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Blue-winged Teal | Spatula discors
Blauwvleugeltaling | Cerceta aliazul
The Blue-winged Teal is a common winter visitor and passage migrant throughout the Caribbean, often in flocks on fresh and brackish water. The first birds arrive from North America as early as August and September, and some continue south to South America. In Cuba it is called pato de la Florida.
Voice
The drake gives a thin, high whistled tsee-ee or peep, the female a soft, high quack. Flocks in flight often give these whistles.
Recording: Stanislas Wroza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
38–41 cm, a small dabbling duck with a fairly long dark bill. The drake has a slate-grey to blue-grey head with a white crescent in front of the eye, a brown body spotted black, a white patch in front of the black stern and yellowish legs. In autumn the drake still resembles the female and acquires breeding plumage in the course of the winter. The female is mottled brown, with a greyish-brown head, a dark eye-stripe, a broken pale eye-ring and a pale spot at the bill base. In flight a pale blue forewing, in the drake bordered by a white bar, and a green speculum.
Confusion species
Female Cinnamon Teal Spatula cyanoptera is warmer and plainer brown, with a plainer face and a longer bill slightly broader at the tip; it often cannot be separated with certainty. Female Garganey Spatula querquedula, a vagrant, has a more strongly patterned head with a dark cheek bar and a white throat. Green-winged Teal Anas crecca is smaller, with a shorter bill and no pale blue forewing. Northern Shoveler Spatula clypeata shares the blue forewing but is larger, with a much larger, spoon-shaped bill.
Habitat
Freshwater marshes, ponds, shallow lagoons, salt pans, rice fields and flooded pastures, also at the edge of mangroves. It feeds by dabbling and filtering in shallow water, on seeds, aquatic plants and small invertebrates. Flocks rest on open water or on muddy shores.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In winter and on migration on almost every island: the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Cuba, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the Lesser Antilles, the ABC Islands and Trinidad and Tobago. Breeds in Canada and the northern and central United States; winters from the southern United States through Mexico and Central America to northern South America.
- Resident
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In winter on almost any shallow pond or lagoon with some vegetation; flocks of Blue-winged Teal can also hold rarer teal. When birds take off, the pale blue forewing is the first thing to catch the eye.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species is hunted on several Caribbean islands, and the wetlands where the birds winter are shrinking through draining and development.
Scientific name
Spatula discors | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Anas discors; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Spatula was introduced in 1822 by Boie. Spatula is Latin for 'spoon' or 'spatula', after the broad, spoon-shaped bill of the shoveler. discors is Latin for 'discordant, differing', literally 'not of one heart'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Virginia or Carolina.